Word: thembu
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...President of South Africa would have been compelled to release Nelson Mandela, dismantle the apparatus of apartheid and pave the way to the promised land of one-man, one-vote elections. For his part, Nelson Mandela has always taken the path of most resistance. The son of a Thembu chief, Mandela was groomed to be a traditional tribal leader but chose instead to become an outlaw in his own land, a man who fought an iniquitous system, not one who abided by it. During the 27 years he was imprisoned by a repressive white minority government, he kept a vision...
...unforgivable. That he bowed to such compromise is testimony to the fact that the Nelson Mandela who walked with such dignity out of prison in February 1990 was not the same firebrand who had been placed there 27 years before. Born into the royal family of the Thembu, a clan of the Xhosa tribe based in the Transkei, Mandela was trained as a boy to rule someday as a chief. Instead he became a lawyer and an A.N.C. militant. It was just a few months after then A.N.C. leader Chief Albert Luthuli was awarded the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize that...
...Nelson was added later, by a primary school teacher with delusions of imperial splendor. Mandela's boyhood was peaceful enough, spent on cattle herding and other rural pursuits, until the death of his father landed him in the care of a powerful relative, the acting regent of the Thembu people. But it was only after he left the missionary College of Fort Hare, where he had become involved in student protests against the white colonial rule of the institution, that he set out on the long walk toward personal and national liberation...
Mandela witnessed the dynamic of leadership early on. Several times a year, his guardian, Chief Jongintaba, the regent of the Thembu tribe, presided over what were essentially tribal town meetings. People came from far and wide to Chief Jongintaba's royal seat, the Great Place at Mqekezweni. These meetings lasted days, and did not end until everyone had had a chance to speak his , mind. Rolihlahla sat on the fringes and watched as his guardian listened in thoughtful silence. Only at the end would Chief Jongintaba speak, and then it was to nurture a consensus. A leader, Mandela learned, does...
Mandela's talent for leadership traces back to his tribal heritage as the son of a royal family of the Thembu tribe of the Xhosa people. After earning a law degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, he joined the A.N.C. With classmate Oliver Tambo, he set up the first black law practice in South Africa in 1952. Defiantly working from a whites-only downtown neighborhood, they specialized in representing blacks who failed to carry the passes that were required of blacks in white neighborhoods...
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